


Funhouse

by ballsandbullets



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:45:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1379578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballsandbullets/pseuds/ballsandbullets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new patriot weapon ends up shedding some light on the different path a certain character may have taken if the Blackout had never happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was absolutely not going to write anything until I started geeking out over the gifs and comments over at http://lightgamble.tumblr.com/. What an enabler. An amazing, intelligent, procrastination-inducing enabler. I don't have a tumblr (sacrilege!), so I had to let it out somehow! First time posting on AO3, so I hope it ends up not looking like a hot mess.

               Stray bullets flew by as they scrambled up the hill. The patriot soldiers weren’t exactly the smartest crayons in the box, but what they lacked in intelligence, they more than made up for in a stupid sort of brute excitement for killing. Charlie ducked behind the trunk of a tree, silently thanking Miles for insisting she always choose clothes that matched the surrounding environment. She crouched and waited for the two patriot soldiers to continue tearing after Monroe. As soon as they pulled even with her position, she slid out from behind the tree, slicing the throat of the rear soldier so swiftly and quietly that the first soldier didn’t even break his stride. Snatching the gun that had fallen out of the dead soldier’s hand, she had aimed, shot, and landed a bullet between the remaining solder’s eyes in the space of time it took him to realize that his partner was no longer tromping along behind him.

               Bending down, she began the process of searching the bodies for weapons or information. A year ago she would have been horrified by her actions, but today all she felt was annoyance that she’d gotten blood on her shirt and shoes from the first soldier. That was going to take another hour of cleaning tonight. That was if Monroe ever figured out she’d dropped behind. Maybe he had, and just didn’t care. He already had the item this whole mission revolved around, after all.

               It had all started a week ago, when they’d found information on the corpse of a patriot scientist after they’d taken down an outpost. It had been labeled “Project Centaur” (rather over-dramatically, in Charlie’s opinion), but nobody had been able to translate the actual science until Rachel had gotten a look at it. Years ago, Charlie had watched her brother lose his grip while dangling out of a tree reaching for an apple. The very worst part, however, had been the expression on her mother’s face. Back then, it was a specific look reserved for Danny alone. If she hadn’t also loved Danny first and best, she might have blamed Rachel for it. Seeing her mother’s face now after reading those documents, she recalled that moment when Danny was frozen, suspended over the ground below, right before free fall, and knew they should all be very, very scared. She had only ever seen Rachel dust off that level of fear and horror for Danny or apocalyptic events.

               Rachel eventually explained to them that the Patriots were attempting to use the nanites for mind control. And not just to create killing machines, but to completely rewrite memories and personalities. To control every aspect of every person at each level of the hierarchy. Rachel was ashen as she explained to them that the person who owned this tech would be like a puppeteer with the entire world on strings. She had ignored the split-second avaricious glint that had passed over Monroe’s eyes. That was a problem for the future. As Rachel had explained it, the Patriots couldn’t yet control what was overridden or replaced in a person’s mind. They had reverse-engineered the nanites, and produced a version that would specifically target an event in a person’s life and rewire that person as though the event had never occurred. In most of the test patients, Rachel said, the event was the Blackout, and only in isolated cases was it another traumatic experience. This tech was only in the infancy of what the Patriots wanted it to become, but thinking about it still made her skin crawl.

               That’s how they ended up pulling off a heist at a black-ops patriot research center, and why she ended up stranded with the world’s token maniacal ex-dictator, who, incidentally, was also in possession of the world’s newest scary technology. According to the floor plans they found at the patriot outpost, Rachel and Miles were supposed to be the ones who snagged the nanites, and she and Monroe were supposed to be backup. The plan went sideways as always, and she and Monroe had had the opportunity to steal the nanites before massive alarms went off in the compound. She hadn’t gotten a chance to make sure Miles and her mom were okay before being swarmed by Patriots, but the plan was to meet back up at their camp. She hoped they were okay. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—think about the alternative. With Charlie’s recent body count, they’d lost the last of the Patriots and were now miles away from the Patriot compound. Well…if they were still a _they_. Monroe was taking his time. Or running off to grow a mustache and perfect his evil laugh.

              Well, speak of the devil. Monroe stormed back into the hilly clearing with thunder in his eyes. “ _Charlotte_. What the _hell_. Did I or did I not tell you to stay on me like a shadow? Does that have a different definition to you or is there a suicide wish here I should know about?” He was gritting his teeth, and stress lined his face.

              Charlie pointedly kicked the limp arm of Douchebag #1 and offered, “The words I believe you’re looking for are ‘ _thank’_ and ‘ _you_.’ What took you so long, anyway?” He looked positively murderous. His grip was knuckle-white around the small box in his hand. It was absurd to Charlie that something so tiny could wreck so much devastation.

              “Charlotte, we need to get out of here _now_.”

              “Sebastian, we needed to get out of here _now_ 2 hours ago.” His gaze flickered down to the box. “Well, at least you came back.”

              His eyes shot back up. “Of course I…” Resignation and a hint of anger shut his face down. “Do you want to get out of here or do you want to talk about it some more?”

              Charlie was moving toward him, still trying to think of a nasty quip, when she realized there was a big, giant, damn HOLE in the nanite box. “What the…?”

              He looked unsure. Nanites were not his area of expertise. “It got shot when we were running.”

              “What are we supposed to do now? How do we know if the nanites are still in there?” She put her hands on her hips and glared.

              “Do I look like serial-killer barbie? I’m not your mother.” He was practically growling.

              They had not come this far to fail now. If the Patriots had any more samples of this, her mom needed to figure out exactly what they were up against and how to stop it. And she needed a sample to do that. If she was even alive. Which she was. Of course she was. She shook her head. “Cover it with your hand! We don’t know what the box is made from, and we could lose what’s left if we cover it with any other organic materials. Mom says they’d just pass though. If there are any nanites left, they’ll go into your body, and at least we’ll be able to study their effects, maybe isolate them from your blood.”

              He looked at her like she’d grown two heads, and then raised an eyebrow. “I don’t do guinea pig, sweetheart.”

              She could have broken his nose for the ‘sweetheart’ alone. “You’re the most expendable.” She sneered. His expression shifted, subtle and unreadable. “Look, we need to do this now, or tomorrow or the next day or the next, they’ll unleash a worse version of this onto the world and we’ll all be guinea pigs. One of us needs to do this.”

              He hesitated. She didn’t.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will do a Bass POV soon, I swear!

               _She had to pick up the cake by 2 o’clock. Terry had forgotten the last time, and almost ruined the entire rush process. Kappa Kappa Gamma not hosting the most glamorous rush party of the season? Total end of the world stuff._ Wait…had she _fainted_? She didn’t have _time_ for this. Her mouth tasted like cotton balls, and her eyes were felt gritty as she forced herself to pry them open.

               A blurry, man-shaped head was hovering right over her face and she could make out the edges of the trees surrounding them. Had someone dragged her into a _forest_? She lashed out, driving the palm of her hand straight into her would-be attacker’s nose just the way Miles had shown her after that girl went missing from campus her freshman year. The psycho-kidnapper made an undignified shriek, and she took that opportunity to start tearing off in no particular direction as the woods started to come into focus. Her fear ramped up into terror as she realized she wasn’t even close to campus. The last time she’d seen woods had been that failed camping trip—she felt the impact as something tackled her from behind and flipped her over. Wait, _what_? Her uncle’s best friend glared down at her, blood still leaking from his nose.

               “Charlie, what the FUCK. I think you broke my goddamn nose before you decided to go on your sightseeing tour!” Uncle Bass was angrier than she had ever seen him, even that time she’d brought Alec to dinner and he’d made a crack about her bra size being larger than her IQ. And he was _yelling_ at her. And cursing. A lot. And kind of dirty.

               “Bass? You look like a homeless person!” Okay, maybe she shouldn’t have led with that, but it just kind of tumbled out. “And what happened to us?” About the same time she managed to start asking questions, she realized that she, too, looked like a homeless person. And smelled like one. Her favorite lemon dress and cork wedges had been replaced with grungy denim and combat boots that looked like they had been doused in red cool-aid. These clothes must have come from a garbage bin somewhere. Now that Bass was here, even if they were in some kind of odd trouble, she knew that she was safe. With the sharp bite of her original fear ebbing, she started to feel embarrassed about looking so rough in front of someone she’d always idolized, and even if she’d never admit it out loud, had a bit of a crush—

               “CHARLOTTE! Are you listening to me? Are you hurt?” Bass had moved on from looking harassed to genuinely panicking, snapping his fingers in front of her face, and then checking her head for what she could only assume was a wound.

               “Uncle Bass, I’m fine! But where are we and who did this to us?” She blinked at him, all wide-eyed, guileless, and baby-blue. Miles and Bass could never resist that look, typically giving her whatever she was asking for with long-suffering affection. Bass, however, just looked like she’d stuck a loaded revolver in his face. If this day hadn’t been weird enough. It was like _she_ was the unhinged or dangerous element of this situation. “Hello? I gotta get back to campus, and I’m already going to have to pay extra for the cake, so if this is part of some bet you lost to Miles, I am going to be so angry with you.” She managed a stern look. “And so help me, Bass, if Miles ditched us out here without a car, and I miss the very last Kappa rush party of my college experience, I will…” She slammed her foot into the ground. “I will tell Eleanor Smith that you and Miles were the ones who ruined her driveway.” She crossed her arms and stared at him expectantly.

               Bass’ face had gone ashen. He let go of her shoulders and took a step back. Just looked at her with a sheen of horror in his eyes. She was starting to get scared again. There was too much planning in this to be one of Bass and Miles’ pranks, and it was starting to go on too long. Bass seemed to steel himself, then stepped back up and gripped her shoulders again. “Okay. Okay. We’re going to fix this, Charlotte. Rachel will fix this. Come on.” His hand gripped her wrist, which she was too freaked out to enjoy, and then he started yanking her back the way they came, like she was an unruly child and he’d misplaced his leash. She dug her heels in and he whipped back around to face her, hair wild and eyes determined. It was unsettling seeing him with so little finesse.

               “Bass, stop treating me like I’m some brainless doll—you’re the one who gets mad when people do that to me! If you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I’m not moving. And if you leave me here, I’ll probably be eaten by wolves, in which case Miles will never speak to you again!” This time, she had seen the little flinch at the corner of his eye when she mentioned Miles.

               “Charlotte. I need you to trust me. Something has been done to you. Like…like a lobotomy. You can’t trust your own memories right now. And this place isn’t safe. We need to go, and we need to go quickly. I need Rachel…I need Rachel to deal with this.” His words were too even and measured, and the skin on his face was taut. She started chuckling. She hadn’t known he was such a good actor.

               “So we’re gonna go see my mother with me looking like this? After a so-called lobotomy I don't remember having? Are you _insane_? Did you let Miles write the script to this? Look, I know my 21 st birthday is coming up and I expected a _small_ prank, but this is isn’t fun! The two of you are acting like children, and, frankly, you’re being mean.” She’d swung back around from being amused at the absurdity of the situation to being angry about it. Bass just started at her, unreadable. Her stomach started to twist. She didn’t think Miles and Bass would do this to her in the first place, but if she’d gotten upset, they’d never keep up the gag. Something was wrong. She was now starting to note small differences in the man in front of her and her Bass, some extra muscle mass, a small scar on his face and big mottled mess of a scar on his arm. He hadn’t had those two days ago when she’d last seen him. The twisting feeling in her gut turned into full-on nausea.

               Bass moved lightning fast, swinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that when they opened, she’d be in her dorm studying or visiting her real uncles or even arguing with her mother. She opened her eyes and only saw the bouncing green of the trees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! And even if Bass thinks this is the equivalent of a lobotomy, the nano are maybe a bit more powerful/mystical than that, which would explain why Charlie has knowledge that she wouldn't have had without growing up in a non-Blackout world.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry so exposition-heavy in the first chapter! Hope you liked it. :)


End file.
